It looks inconsistent September 19, 2011

The view from my apartment window is dominated by a large Christian Scientist church. Notice the subject of this week’s sermon:

Mark Twain once wrote about how, after falling off a cliff in Austria and breaking some arms and legs, he was visited by a Christian Scientist named Mrs. Fuller — who explained that “Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it… Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannot hurt.” After his fractures had healed, he turned to the local horse-doctor, who managed to cure his lingering stomach-ache and cold. Then it was time to settle the bill:

The horse-doctor charged me thirty kreutzers, and I paid him; in fact, I doubled it and gave him a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemized bill for a crate of broken bones mended in two hundred and thirty-four places — one dollar per fracture.

“Nothing exists but Mind?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “All else is substanceless, all else is imaginary.”

I gave her an imaginary check, and now she is suing me for substantial dollars. It looks inconsistent.